


Catch Me Off My Guard

by erinn_bedford



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, and conversations over tea, featuring baker!malcolm, i just have a lot of feelings about dani and malcolm okay, post 1x05, this is like slowburn friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21813949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinn_bedford/pseuds/erinn_bedford
Summary: And she knows she should leave. She got what she came for, and staying would that turn this trip into something else. But she’s curious. She has questions. She puts the lipstick in her pocket and drops herself into the world’s most uncomfortable sleeping chair, and grabs a lemon bar.“So, where did you learn how to bake?”Or Dani forgets her lipstick, and ends up learning something new about Malcolm. Post 1x05.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 20
Kudos: 159





	Catch Me Off My Guard

She forgets her lipstick at his house.

Dani’s not sure how she does it, but she assumes it something to do with sleeping on the counter and dealing with a highly drugged Malcom Bright.

And honestly, if it were any other lipstick, she would have already forgotten about it. But it’s not any other lipstick. It’s her favorite lipstick. Her favorite lipstick that is no longer sold anywhere, that she had bought as many as she could when she heard it was being retired. It was the last tube of her favorite lipstick, and she had been an idiot and decided to wear it out that night because she hadn’t been out in ages. Even if it was for work, and a very stupid idea in the first place.

She had looked literally everywhere else for it, but she remembered seeing it in her bag on the subway to Bright’s, which meant she probably lost it as his place. 

Which is why she was here, standing outside his building on a freezing Saturday morning, because she couldn’t bring herself to text him about it, and apparently just showing up at his apartment made more sense in her mind.

If she hadn’t already rang his doorbell, she would already be walking back home. But she had, so she was here, hands stuffed in her pockets, hoping he was actually home so he could let her inside before she got frostbite. 

“Hello?” His voice crackles out of the speaker just as she’s about to turn around, and her stomach plummets to the floor. She should have never left her apartment today.

“Bright, it’s Dani.”

“Oh! Hey, come on up!”

The door buzzes, and then she’s inside the blissfully warm hallway, and Malcolm’s head pops out from the top of the stairs, and this is a bad idea, she thinks. They are work friends, people who see each other in the office and sometimes at home when he needs someone to take him there, but it’s a Saturday, and this has nothing to do with work. 

She should have just texted him.

“Hi!” His hair flops into his eyes, but he’s smiling at her like nobody’s business, and a weird feeling settles in her chest. 

“Hey,” She says, making her way up the steps, taking in how the hall looks different in the early morning sunlight. The colors are different, and she can see the pictures on the wall, and then way too soon she’s turning the corner and almost running straight into him where he’s waiting for her at the door.

Saturday morning Malcolm is different from any other Malcolm she’s met before. His hair is soft and falling in his face, not arranged in the way she’s used to it. 

He’s also wearing sweatpants. And a faded Harvard sweatshirt, and it's almost too much for her to handle.

She shrugs off her jacket and he takes it from her before she can hang it up herself, so she busies herself with unzipping her boots so she can leave them at the door, not wanting to track the gross half-snow-half-mud slush through his apartment. 

“I don’t mean to barge in, but I think I forgot something here the time I was over.”

“What did you forget?” 

She pauses to say hi to Sunshine before making her way inside. “My lipsti-“

Dani freezes, her eyes falling onto Malcolm standing in the middle of the room. His entire kitchen is covered in pastries. Desserts of all sorts sprinkle every available counter, and the oven timer is slowly counting down to whatever is next.

“Lipstick?” He asks, casually as he’s pulling on a pair of oven mitts, like the scene in front of her in completely normal.

“Yeah.” Dani stops at the edge of the counter and tries to count the amount of different food in front of her but she can’t. She’s pretty sure there’s more dessert than weapons on his weapons wall, and it’s making her question everything she’s ever know about Malcom Bright. “Wait, sorry, I didn’t know you baked.”

“Oh,” his cheeks flush pink, and Dani likes the sight of that way too much. “Yeah, I’m what some people might call a stress baker.” He offers her a plate of cookies, and she’s so confused that she takes one.

“I thought you couldn’t eat most foods.”

“Can’t.”

“Then what-“

“Edrissa like brownies,” he says, pointing to the corner full of brownies and cookies. “Ains likes fruit pies and tarts, Gil loves breads, J.T. like donuts, my mom likes cupcakes, and I occasionally can get through a whole slice of crumble.” He opens the oven and glances inside, frowning at whatever is still baking. “Everything else ends up in the break room at work.”

“So you’re the reason the break room has been incredibly popular the last few weeks?” 

He shrugs as he closes the over door, pulling out one of the fanciest toothpick holders she’s ever seen.“What about you? I haven’t figured out your favorite dessert yet.”

Dani settles herself into the chair she unfortunately slept in a few weeks ago, right in front of an apple crumble. “I’m known to like a bunch of different things.”

“Good to know.” He flashes her a smile and then moves to wrapping up one of the pies with tin foil. “So, you were saying you lost your lipstick?”

“Yes!” She pushes herself off the chair, because she is not supposed to be getting comfortable here. “I have looked everywhere else for it, and this is the only place I can think I left it.”

“It might be in the bathroom cabin-“ the timer goes off and he glances between her and the oven and his ridiculous fancy tooth picks, and she can tell he’s going to choose the currently unknown pastry, so she nods, and starts making her to the bathroom.

“I’m not sure though. My mother sends her cleaner over here because she doesn’t think I can take care of myself and most of the time, I end up not knowing where anything is.”

Dani opens the cabinet, and it’s surprisingly bare, considering the rest of his bathroom is a full of things. Surprisingly bare, except for a perfectly sized tube of lipstick. Her lipstick. A sigh of relief falls from her mouth, and its a little ridiculous how happy she is have found it, but she has her lipstick and now she can stop feeling weird about coming over to Malcolm’s apartment on a random Saturday morning.

“Found it!” she says, when she comes back into the kitchen, and she’s about to go and get her boots and be out of his hair when she sees he’s placed a cup of tea in on the counter for her. He’s resting on the other side, his own cup of tea and plate of still steaming lemon bars cooling in the space between them.

And she knows she should leave. She got what she came for, and staying would that turn this trip into something else. But she’s curious. She has questions. She puts the lipstick in her pocket and drops herself into the world’s most uncomfortable sleeping chair, and grabs a lemon bar.

“So, where did you learn how to bake?” 

“Technically, my mother.”

Dani can’t stop her face being surprised, and he laughs at that, and it makes that stupid dumb feeling in her chest grow a bit more.

“See, you’ve met my mother.” He takes a sip of his tea and plates her a bar. “She would never cook or do anything when we kids. Or now, for that matter. We always had staff for that. But on Christmas, she would always make this apple crumble, and Ainsley and I would sit in the kitchen with her. It was the only time she would ever talk about her family.” Malcolm shrugs and cuts piece of his bar. “And then when everything happened with my dad, she would start making them all the time. It became the only time I didn’t feel like the world was falling apart around us.”

He pauses for a moment, the weight of his words just hanging between them, and Dani doesn’t know what to do say. “Bright I-“

“But mother only cooked crumble, and only for a few months, so then I started sitting in with our cook when she would bake. And then whenever I was over at Gil’s house, I would ask Jackie to teach me everything. So I have a rather rounded baking education.”

“Crumble’s your comfort food?” 

Malcolm blinks. “Hmm?”

“You’re comfort food. When you were high you wanted to make crumble. And I made you grilled cheese, because that’s my comfort food.” Dani tucks her hair behind her ears and grabs a bit of the lemon bar. “My mom would make us grilled cheese whenever we had a bad day, and it’s like the only meal I can make without fucking up.” 

“From what I remember, it was a pretty fantastic grilled cheese.”

She stuffs the lemon bar in her mouth to shut herself up, but it’s a mistake. She wasn’t really expected anything much, but she can’t help the moan that escapes from mouth. 

Malcolm laughs into his tea, and Dani can only nod and try to not stuff the rest of the dessert in her mouth. 

“That’s not fair. How can you be so good at this?” 

Malcolm’s smile grows. “I’ve been stressed since I was 8 years old. Lot’s of practice.”

Dani grabs another bite so she doesn’t have to say anything right away. There’s a lot about Malcolm Bright that she doesn’t know yet. And there’s a lot about her that he doesn’t know. But she does know that this conversation could be about a lot more than baking, but she needs to know if she’s prepared for that.

They are sort of friends. She remembers his face when he asked her if they were really friends, and how it fell when she said no, because she’s not good at friends. She’s not good at the trusting people and letting people in, and she has zero filter which gets on people’s nerves, and she’s been through a lot. A lot that can scare people away and a lot that has, so she guards herself. 

But he looked so crushed when she said they weren’t friends. And against all odds, she likes him. He’s one of the few people she’s met who has been through even more than her, who knows what it’s like to scare people away. They haven’t know each other for long, but for some reason, she knows she trusts him. Which is pretty big for her. 

“You know, if you ever need someone to talk to about whatever’s stressing you out, I’m always down for a lemon bar. Or a blueberry muffin,” she grabs her cup of tea, the scent of earl grey greeting her as she pulls it closer. “Or just a cup of tea, with a friend.”

Malcolm ducks his head and tries to hide his smile, but he’s not very good at hiding his emotions. His face is an open book of possibilities. That’s something she knows about him. She wouldn’t mind getting to know more.

“Thanks, Dani. And speaking of thanks, I want to take you out to dinner, to properly say thank you for taken care of me. Twice now,” he says.

She stuffs another piece of lemon bar in her mouth instead of answering. 

Dinner outside of sharing a hotdog on stake out is more than just coworker things. Dinner on a Saturday is so much more than just coworker things.

A part of her feels like it could even be a more than friends thing. That part of her also kind of likes the idea of it being a more than friends thing.

“It’s not even 11:30 yet,” she says, because it’s the first rational thing that comes to her mind. She should have waiting for the first smart thing to come to her mind.

Malcolm nods, like what she said was an actual response, folding his hands together so he can place his head on them.

“What about brunch then? I know a great coffee place that has one of the most impressive tea walls I have ever seen.” 

She should say no. She should have left as soon as she had her lipstick, but she’s still here, sitting at his counter on a freezing cold Saturday morning.

“You don’t have to take me out to thank me,” she says, trying one last time. 

Malcolm’s face brightens. “But I want too.”

And it shouldn’t, it really shouldn’t, but it makes her heart jump in her chest. It make her cheeks heat up, and she tries to squash the smile from erupting on her face, but all it does it make her entire face scrunch up like she’s some 16 year old with a crush on a boy who just told he he thought she was pretty.

But maybe that’s what she is. A 25 year old with a crush on a boy who she trusts more than she should. A boy that smiles at her and has even less of a filter than she does, a boy who is currently watching her like whatever she says next going to determine the fate of the universe. 

“Okay, I could be down for some more tea.”

“Great!” Malcolm’s up in the next instant, and then he’s holding out her jacket for her once she’s finished zipping up her boots, and when she turns, he’s close to her. As close as they where when he was high and wanted to dance with her.

Close enough that she can feel his breath wash over her skin he breathes out. 

Close enough, that the part of her brain that she’s allowing to have a crush on him is now thinking about kissing him.

But she doesn’t. She’s not good at friends, and she’s definitely not very good at relationships, and the last thing she wants to do is mess up whatever fragile thing they have between them right now.

She she takes a step back. Tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. Turns to the mirror in the hall while Malcom pulls on his jacket, and grabs her lipstick from her pocket before smoothing it over her lips.

“It’s a good lipstick,” Malcolm says, as he finishes zippering his coat. Dani raises an eyebrow at him as he pulls on his gloves. “I understand why you came back for it.” He offers her his elbow, and it’s so very upper class New York of him that the only she can do is roll her eyes and take his arm.

When she gets into work on Monday, there’s a blueberry muffin sitting on her desk.

And if a warm feeling settles in her chest at the sight of it, then that’s her problem to worry about later. 

Right now, she has a muffin to eat.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I started this fic literally the week this episode premiered, so it's been stewing in my wips for a few weeks now. I just have a lot of feelings about Dani and Malcolm's friendship and relationship. And high!Malcolm being so excited about crumble somehow erupted into over 2,000 words. I needed something happy to deal with the midseason finale. 
> 
> Side note, as I was writing this, I discovered that my favorite lipstick is no longer being produced, and then I lost it, so do with that information what you will.
> 
> Title from Shoulders by Levi Mattan.
> 
> As always, you can find me on tumblr [here!](https://fallinfor-youreyes.tumblr.com/)


End file.
